Release Week: 18 October 2022

Release Week: 18 October 2022

Posted on 2022-10-18 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

SERIES WATCH:

• Blitz: The Rook Files, Book 3 By: Daniel O'Malley, read by Moira Quirk for Little, Brown and Company -- "In the riveting new thriller in the Rook Files series, a new recruit to the most powerful supernatural intelligence agency on Earth is accused of going rogue and must go on the run to clear her name."

• About Time: The Time Police, Book 4 By: Jodi Taylor, read by Zara Ramm for Headline -- "Patience is not a virtue known to the Time Police. And Commander Hay is facing the longest day of her life."

BACKLIST WATCH:

• Shoggoths in Traffic and Other Stories By: Tobias S. Buckell (2021), read by Jonathan Todd Ross, Jasmin Walker, William DeMeritt, and Jamie Lincoln Smith for Recorded Books -- "In these twenty-four stories you’ll find inhabitants of a small town who won’t vaccinate against a zombie plague, a lone sentry keeping motorists from stumbling into something ancient and evil, a man who puts stranded ghosts to rest, an ex-soldier traveling the seas who trades his new life of hardship for a return to swords and blood, and many more tales of speculative fiction."

• Dead Things: Eric Carter, Book 1 By: Stephen Blackmoore (2013), read by Rudy Sanda for Tantor -- "Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it's a title Eric Carter is stuck with. He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He's turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course."

• The Dream Master By: Roger Zelazny (1966), read by George Newbern for Tantor -- "His name is Charles Render, and he is a psychoanalyst, and a mechanic of dreams. A Shaper. In a warm womb of metal, his patients dream their neuroses, while Render, intricately connected to their brains, dreams with them, makes delicate adjustments, and ultimately explains and heals. Her name is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry. She wants desperately to become a Shaper, though she has been blind from birth. Together, they will explore the depths of the human mind-and the terrors that lurk therein."

INDIE WATCH:

• The Gargoyle's Handbook: The Adventures of Gorlen Vizenfirthe Series, Book 1 By: Marc Laidlaw, read by Stefan Rudnicki for Skyboat -- "From the writer of the blockbuster videogame Half-Life, ten stories of the bard with a gargoyle’s hand."

MOST MISSING:

• TITAN: A novel by Mado Nozaki (Airship/Seven Seas) -- "In the distant future, society has all but eliminated the need for a sentient workforce. Thanks to an all-powerful AI network known collectively as Titan, humanity is now free to indulge in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. But one day, hobbyist psychologist Seika Naisho gets a job offer from a mysterious man by the name of Narain Srivastava--one of only a handful of people in the entire world who is still traditionally employed. Narain wishes to enlist her expertise in the wake of a sudden and inexplicable malfunction in the AI network: as a therapist for Titan itself."

• The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume Three edited by Paula Guran (Pyr) -- "The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real. . . Such tales of the dark and the unknown have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows."

• The Consequences: Stories by Manuel Muñoz (Graywolf Press) -- "Shimmering stories set in California's Central Valley, the first book in a decade from a virtuoso story writer."

• You Fed Us To the Roses: Short Stories by Carlie St. George (Chipped Cup Collective) -- "Final girls who take care of each other. Dead boys still breathing. Ghosts who whisper secrets you can never share. Angels beyond the grave, yet not of heaven. Wolves who wear human skins."

PICKS:

• README.txt: A Memoir By: Chelsea Manning, read by the author for Macmillan -- " An intimate, revealing memoir from one of the most important activists of our time."

• All the Horses of Iceland By: Sarah Tolmie, read by Ulf Bjorklund for Tantor -- "Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more."

• Seven Empty Houses By: Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell, read by Yareli Arizmendi, Gisela Chipe, Ines del Castillo, Daisy Guevara, Lee Osorio, Elena Rey, and Victoria Villarreal for Penguin -- "The seven houses in these seven stories are empty. Some are devoid of love or life or furniture, of people or the truth or of memories. But in Samanta Schweblin’s tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child’s first encounter with a dark choice or the fallibility of parents."

• Liberation Day: Stories By: George Saunders, read by the author with Tina Fey, Michael McKean, Edi Patterson, Jenny Slate, Jack McBrayer, Melora Hardin, and Stephen Root for Random House -- "A collection of short stories that make sense of our increasingly troubled world, his first since the New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Tenth of December."

• Poster Girl By: Veronica Roth, read by Anna Caputo for Audible -- "The story of a woman's desperate search for a missing girl after the collapse of the oppressive dystopian regime—and the dark secrets about her family and community she uncovers along the way."

• Self-Portrait with Nothing By: Aimee Pokwatka, read by Jesse Vilinsky for Macmillan -- "Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now, at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother. That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgängers from parallel universes."

• The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis By: Emma Bolden, read by the author for Blackstone -- "Bolden uses her own experience as the starting point for a journey through the institutional misogyny of Western medicine—from a history of labeling women “hysterical” and parading them as curiosities to a lack of information on causes or cures for endometriosis, despite more than a century of documented cases."

• Demon Copperhead: A Novel By: Barbara Kingsolver, read by Charlie Thurston for Harper -- "The story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses."

• The Last Chairlift By: John Irving, read by Jacques Roy, Raquel Beattie, Cassandra Campbell, Chris Henry Coffey, Piper Goodeve, Em Grosland, Aden Hakimi, Graham Halstead, Chanté McCormick, Natalie Naudus, Aida Reluzco, Pete Simonelli, Natasha Soudek, Travis Tonn, and Erin Ruth Walker for Simon and Schuster -- "His first novel in seven years—a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics."

• Singer Distance By: Ethan Chatagnier, read by Tristan Morris for Blackstone -- "In December 1960, Crystal Singer, her boyfriend Rick, and three other MIT grad students take a cross-country road trip from Boston to Arizona to paint a message in the desert. Mars has been silent for thirty years, since the last time Earth solved one of the mathematical proofs the Martian civilization carved onto its surface. The latest proof, which seems to assert contradictory truths about distance, has resisted human understanding for decades. Crystal thinks she’s solved it, and Rick is intent on putting her answer to the test―if he can keep her from cracking under the pressure on the way. But Crystal’s disappearance after the experiment will set him on a different path than he expected, forever changing the distance between them."

• Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman By: Alan Rickman, read by Steven Crossley, with a foreward by Emma Thompson read by Bonnie Wright, afterword written and read by Rina Horton, and an introduction by Alan Taylor and read by Alfred Enoch -- "A rare invitation into the mind of Alan Rickman—one of the most magnetic, beloved performers of our time."

• Head Cleaner By: David James Keaton, read by Joe Hempel for Blackstone -- "The last Blockbuster video store in the United States is hanging on by a thread. And after a crazy night attempting to track down a lost VCR rental to collect the record-setting and internet-famous late fee, three employees, idealistic Eva, cinephile Jerry, and their tyrannical manager Randy, discover that this machine may actually have the power to change the endings of popular films, which, depending on the historical basis of the film, might also be changing the real world around them."

• Hex Appeal By: Kate Johnson, read by Catrin Walker Booth for One More Chapter/HarperCollins -- "Essie Winterscale lives in a huge and ever-changing house in the village of Good Winter, in deepest, darkest Essex. She lives with various witches of various ages, one of whom is still a bit salty about being hanged in the 1700s, one who keeps accidentally casting fertility spells, and one who knits things that create the future. All Essie ever wanted was to have a normal life but in the end she found herself drawn back to Beldam House."

• The Tangled Stars By: Edward Willett, read by Wayne Mitchell for HighBridge -- "More than a century ago, the network of MASTTs, the space-time tunnels that made interstellar travel possible, violently collapsed, the backlash destroying a lot of the solar system's space-based infrastructure. Cooper "Coop" Douglas, a thief and conman is in serious debt to outer-system crime-lord Eric Galioto. While trying to salvage a valuable chunk of a space station destroyed by the backlash, Coop makes a startling discovery: MASTT Primus, the tunnel that used to lead to New Earth, is open again."

• The Nox By: Joe White and Catriona Ward, read by Lashana Lynch, Michiel Huisman, Ralph Ineson, and a full cast for Audible Originals -- "2045, the Arctic Circle. A crew of six aboard the research vessel, The Nox, embark upon a voyage through the melting ice and Arctic dark in search of the last of the polar bears. The mission represents a ray of hope in a world ravaged by climate change, but it quickly becomes clear that some on board are in search of more than bears."

• When We Were Sisters: A Novel By: Fatimah Asghar, read by Farah Kidwai, Kamran Khan, and Deepti Gupta for Random House -- " An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel."

• Signal Fires: A Novel By: Dani Shapiro, read by the author for Random House -- "On a summer night in 1985, three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything changes."

• Listening in the Dark: Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition edited by Amber Tamblyn, read by Amber Tamblyn, Dr. Mindy Nettifee, Dr. Nicole Apelian, Meredith Talusan, Dr. Dara Kass, Ada Limón, Bonnie Tamblyn, Lidia Yuknavitch, Jia Tolentino, Sarah Vowell, Uzo Aduba, Samantha Irby, Huma Abedin, Emily Wells, and America Ferrera for Harlequin -- "Includes essays from Jessica Valenti, Lidia Yuknavitch, Jia Tolentino, Samantha Irby, Meredith Talusan, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Amy Poehler, America Ferrera, Ada Limón, Huma Abedin and many others, who all share how intuition has helped to shape and alter their life choices."

• The Boys from Biloxi: A Legal Thriller By: John Grisham, read by Michael Beck for Random House -- "The riveting story of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends, but ultimately find themselves on opposite sides of the law."

• The Method by James Patterson and Michael B. Silver, read by Zachary Quinto, Stephanie Beatriz, Lil Rel Howery, Justine Lupe, Jack Davenport, and a full cast for Audible Originals -- "We meet Brent Quill, a frustrated actor trying to take his game to the next level. When he learns about the intensive Method acting process, he dives in deep—and immediately lands the lead role in a TV series about a brutal serial killer."

• The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy By: Anand Giridharadas, read by the author for Random House -- "An insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy."

Posted in Release Week